CDC Warps the Science to Support the Demands of
Capitalism
Joe Biden promised all schools would reopen within his first
100 days in office. The major teacher unions have jumped on board, mandating
that their affiliates subordinate the needs and concerns of their members to
those of the Democratic party. Consequently, we have seen Chicago, the 3rd
largest school district in the nation, forced back into operation by its own
union, even though many teachers say they have no functioning air filtration
systems in their classrooms and that their own administrators are so
ill-informed about the safety protocols that they’re asking the teachers to
explain them.
On Friday, the CDC published their latest update on “safe” school
reopening, demonstrating their willingness to subordinate science and the
public’s health to the demands of capital. In this publication, they insist on
using the word SAFE (as in “schools can safely open”) even though this is
impossible to assert. In a pandemic, even in communities with low infection
rates, it is still easy for an asymptomatic or presymptomatic student or staff
member to squeak past the ubiquitous wellness checks and potentially infect
dozens of students and staff members. It only takes one person to die or suffer
serious complications for the claim of “safe” to be proven false. Furthermore,
it is not just a question of whether kids and/or staff members get seriously ill
or die. If a child catches the virus at school, then takes it home and a family
or community member gets seriously ill or dies, that, too is evidence that reopening
the school was not safe.
Semantics aside, the meat of the CDC’s plan should give
pause to anyone who has been paying attention to the Covid news over the past
year. First, they say that even when communities are at 100 or more new daily
infections per 100,000 residents (i.e., completely out-of-control spread), K-5
schools can still safely open with proper mitigation. But there is no
mitigation that can keep the highly infectious asymptomatic people out of
school. Young kids can still transmit the virus readily to family and community
members. Even if no K-5 children die, their teachers and
their family and community members can. The more people congregate in crowded
indoor environments during a surge, the worse the surge gets and the longer it
lasts. And with the highly infectious UK variant expected to become the dominate
strain in the U.S. by mid-March, it seems scientifically irresponsible and
criminal to be encouraging any sort of indoor gatherings, including K-5
schools. Indeed, Michael Osterholm and many others are predicting another new
surge to start in the next week or two, and that it will be worse
than the last one because of these new variants.
The CDC also strongly encourages communities with infection
rates as high as 10-49 new daily infections per 100,000 residents to “fully
open” for in-person learning (i.e full classrooms). This implies that physical distancing
measures will be abandoned and it's an internal contradiction. If physical
distancing is considered one of the keystone mitigation measures, how can a
school “safely” open with proper mitigation if they have classrooms filled with
30-40 students, sitting elbow to elbow?
The CDC cited 2 studies (schools
in North Carolina and rural
Wisconsin) that suggested that infection rates within schools was lower
than the rate of community infection, as if this proved schools were safe. But
this reasoning is fallacious on two counts: First, no one can get infected at
school unless at least one person who is already infected (i.e., picked it up
in the community) brings it to school. Therefore, it is irrelevant if school infection
rates are lower than community infection rates. Both are places were Covid
spreads. People infected at school can bring it back to the community and vice
versa. If our goal is to reduce infections, flatten the curve, get this
pandemic under control, then, logically, we should be reducing our number of
indoor interactions with those outside of our household. We should be reducing all indoor contacts (see Stop Swapping Air
campaign), including school. Opening schools, regardless of the reasons
why, only serves to increase our indoor air exposure and, thus, our risk of
getting sick, which is the opposite of safety.
Second, if anyone gets infected at school, even just one
person, we have, by definition, proven that the school was NOT safe. For, if it
truly was safe, if all the mitigation efforts were working, no one would catch
it from the individual(s) who brought it in from the community. Yet, in the North
Carolina study, 32 kids still got infected at school, proving that the schools
failed to prevent kids from getting infected (i.e. failed to keep them safe).
Both studies were also biased in a significant way. The
studies were done between August and October, when community infection rates
were comparatively low. In North Carolina, there were ~14 new daily cases per
100,000 in mid-September. While this would still be within the most restrictive
Purple Tier if it were in California, it is far lower than the infection rates
the CDC cited as safe for reopening. And it is only logical to assume that with
higher community infection rates, there will also be higher school infection
rates, since it would be easier for kids to get infected outside of school and
then bring it with them to school. So, even if school infection rates are lower
than community infection rates, that does not mean that schools are safer. Schools
simply add yet another crowded, indoor environment in which to swap germs and
spread the disease.
There are other problems with the claim that school
infection rates were lower than the community infection. First, if a community
is doing little to mitigate spread (e.g., not enforcing mask and distancing
mandates, allowing in-person activity in crowded indoor environments, like
gyms, salons, retail stores), then it stands to reason they will have higher
infection rates. But what about in communities, like the San Francisco Bay
Area, where community mitigation is fairly strict and well adhered to? Opening
schools in places like this could see the inverse occurring, with kids
spreading the virus in schools and then bringing it back home, precipitating
new community outbreaks. Indeed, a recent Canadian study found that recent community
outbreaks there were caused by schools. And this study found that that
Covid transmission among kids is NOT a consequence, but a cause of community outbreaks.
Another problem with these
studies is that they represent only a few schools from only two states. It is a
form of data cherry-picking. With millions of public school children in the
U.S., it stands to reason there’d be many examples in which a school seemed to reopening
“safely.” However, it would be scientifically and ethically irresponsible to extrapolate
the results of these two studies to all schools and districts throughout the
nation, as many scientists and pundits are doing. First, kids did get contract
the virus at school in these studies and we don’t know the extent to which
they infected family and community members, or how many people subsequently
suffered severe illness or death. Second, these two studies may represent anomalies.
In science, we cannot confirm a hypothesis without considerable data.
Furthermore, the results must be consistent, even when the study is repeated by
other researchers. Yet, there are ample cases where the results have been different,
where lots of kids and staff members were infected by school outbreaks. While
not exactly the same scientific methodology, there is this example, where, despite
social distancing, Nearly
an Entire Class Contracted Covid. Or this one: Schools
Are Now the 2nd Biggest Source of New Covid Outbreaks in England.
The CDC identified “five key mitigation strategies” which
they claim make in-person learning safe: Universal and correct use of masks;
physical distancing; handwashing and respiratory etiquette; cleaning and
maintaining healthy facilities; and contact tracing in combination with
isolation and quarantine, in collaboration with the health department.
Yet how can we expect any, let alone all, schools to adhere
to these? Administrators are notoriously weak in the enforcement of discipline.
Indeed, at my own school, our union rep told us that if kids refuse to wear
their masks, admin will be applying a “3 strikes” rule. But how can that be
considered “good mitigation” when it allows people to break the rules 3 times
before getting some form of discipline. We’re talking about a deadly disease. Even
if they were expelled from campus, that would still provide 3 opportunities for
them to get infected or to infect others. Would we give a kid three chances
with a loaded weapon? With the current moratorium on suspensions and expulsions
that are occurring in many school districts in the name of racial equity, it is
likely that students who break the rules will not even be sent home, let alone the
principal’s office. Additionally, many teachers (like the Americans, in general)
are conflict adverse and will go to great lengths to avoid calling students and
peers out for misbehavior. This also suggests that many of these “safety” rules
will be routinely violated.
One could argue that I’m being unduly suspicious and
negative. However, I have taught high school for 23 years and these observations
are what I have seen at both low-income urban districts and wealthy suburban
districts in which I’ve taught. Furthermore, it is more prudent to assume that
violations will occur and have a plan, than to assume everything will workout and
be unprepared when it does not. Take masks, for example. How can we expect
students or staff to keep them on for 8 hours a day, especially in rooms with
lousy HVAC systems or during hot spring months? How can we expect kids, who’ve
been denied live social interactions with their peers for the past year to always
keep 6 feet apart and refrain from handholding, fist-bumping and high-fiving
each other? And I’m just talking about teenagers here. The idea of
6-7-year-olds refraining from hugging and taking masks off is just plain delusional.
And, of course, there are many special needs students for whom these rules will
be particularly difficult to enforce.
According to the Covid Monitor (2/13/21), which tracks Covid
outbreaks at schools, there have been 643,610
school infections, 382,264 of which occurred in students. This can hardly
be considered “safe” or an indication of success. Evidence indicates that household
spread is common. Therefore, while many of the infected individuals likely
picked up the virus at home and then infected peers at school, we can safely
assume that thousands of others were infected at school and then brought the
virus home. If we traced all the people who contacted the students who got
their infections at school, and all the contacts of those contacts, those
600,000 school infections likely led to millions of other infections. This,
too, can hardly be defined as “safe.”
The CDC guidelines say that contact tracing and
quarantining need to be part of the mitigation plan, but these have rarely been
consistently done anywhere in the country, at any time during the pandemic. The
guidelines say nothing about where the funding would come from. Indeed, perhaps
if the funding existed, these programs would have been in place last year and
we could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Another problem is that schools vary dramatically in terms
of the age and safety of their facilities. A US Government Accountability
Office report from June 2020, said that 54% of public school districts needed
to update or replace their HVAC systems. This is a significant factor in Covid
mitigation. How will dilapidated old schools in the midwest or east coast keep
the students warm in snowy winter months while maintaining a safe airflow with
broken down, ancient HVAC systems? Even in my wealthy district, many classrooms
have dysfunctional HVAC systems that keep the rooms in the 90s, even when it’s
a cold winter day, or that have broken air filtration systems.
Contrary to
the CDC’s recent proclamation that schools can be safely opened, there is
considerable evidence that the opposite is true, that keeping schools closed is
far safer than opening them. Here are just a few examples:
·
Osterholm
Says the Data is Clear: It is Unsafe for Kids Age 10-19 to Be in School
·
Studies
show that Keeping Schools Closed Significantly Reduces Transmission rates.
·
This
study shows a 40-60% reduction in infections when schools are closed.
·
And this
one, by pandemic expert Dr. Howard Merkel, shows that closing schools early
and keeping them closed is one of the best ways to curtail a pandemic.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it is possible to operate schools
“safely” during a pandemic, assuming full compliance with every one of the CDC’s
mitigation recommendations. But why should anyone believe that full compliance
will happen at all, let alone most of the time? Schools are bureaucracies with
lots of competing interests within them. Compliance requires the full
cooperation of dozens to hundreds of individuals who must all be fully versed
in the logic behind the rules and provided the power to enforce them. Yet there
are countless examples over the past year where this has failed. Dozens of districts
and entire countries that have insisted they were doing it safely, only to see
surges in new infections occurring at school. The following are just a few of
the many examples of these failures, but they should be sufficient to make
everyone skeptical that it will somehow be done right in their own community,
with their own children or adult family members who work in schools.
·
70
New Infections Causes France to Reclose Schools After Only 1 Week.
·
Covid
Outbreaks Force Israel to Close Schools Immediately After Reopening
·
Canadian
Study Finds That Schools Were Cause of Recent Community Outbreaks
·
Study
of 41 Countries Finds Closing Schools Reduced Covid Spread by 38%
·
3
Arizona Teachers Shared a Room for Summer School & Caught Covid, 1 Died
·
NY
Has 78 Educator Covid Deaths So Far
·
Even the CDC
said that Reopening Schools is Highest Risk for Spreading Covid (but this
was back in July, before they were under as much pressure from the politicians
and Wall Street to justify reopening the schools)
·
3
More Teachers Die
·
Over 2,000 UK
Schools Have Covid Outbreaks
·
45% of All UK
Covid Infections Linked to Schools
·
Reopening
German Schools Leads to Explosion of infections
·
1
Student in Israel Infected 25 Teachers
·
Leaked
emails Show Sweden Knew in March That Schools Would Spread Covid
·
8 More Teacher
Deaths
·
99 School
Outbreaks in Michigan
·
2/3 of French
Outbreaks are Occurring in the Schools
·
2
Days After Opening, 81 Students Quarantined in Escondido
It is also important to recognize
that while kids have a lower risk of serious complications and death, they can
get seriously ill and die. Indeed, many have. Furthermore, they can also spread
the disease as easily as adults. So, even if they aren’t getting seriously ill
or dying, they may be contributing to other people’s serious complications and
deaths.
·
31,000
Children Have Covid in Florida, 23% Spike in Juvenile Hospitalizations
·
74,000
Kids Infected In 1st Two Weeks of August, 21% Increase
·
Increasing
# of Severe Inflammatory & Cardiac Symptoms in Kids With Covid-19
·
Study
Indicates That Kids & Adults Have Similar Infection Rates
·
Spike
in Fatal Kawasaki-Like Symptoms in Children with Covid-19
·
61,000
Children Infected With Covid Last Week
·
Asymptomatic
Patients May Still Have Significant Organ Damage
·
Another Study
Indicates Children Can Transmit Covid as Well as Adults
·
Preliminary
Data Indicates Children are Just as Likely to Catch Covid 19 as Adults
·
Surge of Deadly Multisystem Inflammatory
Syndrome in Kids (See here & here & here & here & here)
It is very clear that the drive
to reopen the schools is based almost entirely on the demands of capitalism.
Everyone must go back to work now, regardless of whether it is safe for them
and regardless of whether there is any work to go back to. Reopening the schools
is considered the primary strategy to meet this demand, as teachers provide
free (tax-funded) babysitting for parents. But it should also be clear that
reopening the schools while the pandemic is still raging out of control will
only perpetuate the current surge and doing so, even when we’re back in the
orange tier, will only contribute to new surges and perpetuate the needless
hospitalizations and deaths.
